oh,for goodness sake, just realized Best American Medical Writing isn't in the same series... pays to do one's homework, it seems...

Best American Medial Writing is a new one. The Inaugural 2009 issue was edited by Pauline Chen. I don't know who's editing 2010 but I'd like to nominate myself (!) if that's not to terrible for 2011! I work at the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, have personal essays on topics including women/mothers in medicine published widely, have a 1999 memoir from Ballantine on my medical training at Johns Hopkins, and am the editor of "Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies" a 2009 published independent award winning collection of women's illness narratives. Terrible self promotion, I know, but if they're looking for women of color, well, here I am!

Other ideas:

The Best American Short Stories - Edwidge Danticat
The Best American Essays - Zadie Smith
The Best American Comics - Marisa Marchetto (author of Cancer Vixen)
The Best American Mystery Stories - Judith Keller
The Best American Travel Writing - Frances Mayes (I agree!)

Thanks! Done!

Ron just let me know, it is [email protected]! Everyone, if you get a chance, please resend your emails to Lori with your nominees for Best American eds for 2011...

Ron is terrific. Let me know when you get the email right and I'll resend my nomination (Roxana Robinson)..thanks! Jane

All right, I am going to right to Lori myself (I think I will invite her to do an interview on SW) and see what happens; I must have it wrong, sorry! My friend Ron Hogan is head of Digital Marketing there so I will ask him too. Rachel, love your comment and your description of the process. Of course that is how it should be. It is so myopic and arrogant, really, to believe your tastes aren't subjective in a way that can be prejudicial -- realizing that it is true, and taking action to address it, is what leadership means.

Also, by the way, the discussion at the NYT continues (including with the help of a veeerry long comment by me -- but what can I say? I was annoyed). Lots of interesting comments there!

I just tried to nominate Aimee Bender for both Short Stories and Nonrequired reading and got email bouncebacks also. (I tried with both Lori_ and lori_, but caps didn't make a difference.)

It has been stated that the elimination of woman and non-Caucasians from the editorial board of Best American writers 2011 was intentional. While this may very much the case, when the final list was compiled this lack of ‘roundness’ should have been noticed and rectified before final decisions regarding the editorial team were solidified.

I’m the editor of a small literary anthology, New Writing Dundee. Every year we receive over 600 submissions from around the world, and in order to create the long and short lists I assemble a selection committee. I create this selection committee by asking those I know who would be appropriate – writers, editors, and writing students. I also use recommendations, and sometimes ask writers of whose work I admire.

Every year, my list is almost entirely white women, and, every year, I know this will need to be rectified before I can continue on with the selection process. It does not need to be rectified due to any sort of equal opportunity law (the work is unpaid), the reason I always try to vary the backgrounds of my selection committee is so that the best possible work can be chosen for my publication. If I used a selection board of people all with the same tastes, backgrounds and ideas of writing, I would have an anthology of 50 pieces of identical fiction. But by making my committee varied, then the work that is chosen is varied. On my committee I have, of the twelve, three men, nine women, two Americans, one Australian, one Indian, two English, seven Scottish (it's a Scottish publication) and one disabled individual. Those on the committee write crime fiction, steampunk, poetry, science fiction, young adult fiction, and all use a plethora of literary styles. This gives me a wonderfully rounded anthology.

Wouldn’t it behove the editors of the Best American series in 2010 to seek out the same sort of results? A varied publication representing the best of American writing? I’m going to be sending in my nominations, and I hope all of She Writes does as well. After all, it’s not really racism or sexism that needs to be combated, but bad editing practices and a lack of forward planning. Thanks to SheWrites for helping to set it all straight,

I just tried it again, got bounceback, with this message:
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 Mailbox unavailable or access denied

[email protected] should be right -- will you let me know if that still doesn't work? And has anyone else had the same problem?

I sent an email to Lori Glazer with a nomination and it bounced back, is that email correct?

For Short Stories: Marlilyn Robinson, Joan Silber, Cynthia Ozick, Amy Hempl. Robinson would also b e a great choice for essays.

Here are a few ideas:

The Best American Short Stories - Elizabeth Strout
The Best American Essays - Zadie Smith
The Best American Comics - Young Kim
The Best American Nonrequired Reading - Amy Sedaris
The Best American Science and Nature Writing - Elizabeth Royte
The Best American Mystery Stories - Joyce Carol Oates
The Best American Travel Writing - Frances Mayes
The Best American Sports Writing - Jackie MacMullan

Jennifer - that is really good to know, and thank you for calling it out! (The Best American Poetry 2010 is published by Simon & Schuster -- Kamy was responding to the editors of those editions put out by Houghton Mifflin -- all male, all white.)

Definitely check out the discussion of Kamy's post in the New York Times!: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/2010s-best-are-all-men/#preview

Just wanted to note that The Best American Poetry 2010 is being edited by Amy Gerstler--a fabulous poet, and a woman to boot.